Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: Using Situational Crisis Communication Theory To Analyze Communication Practices on YouTube

This thesis investigates the case study of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica crisis that broke public in March 2018. This scandal spurned public discourse surrounding user data and privacy in the digital age. Using content analysis to interpret the data, this research analyzes videos from Facebook’s YouTube channel to explain the extent to which Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and its crisis response strategies can explain Facebook’s communication practices before and after the crisis. The findings suggest that SCCT and the crisis response strategies derived from the theory can be used to explain Facebook’s communication practices on its YouTube channel. The results reveal that Facebook primarily used crisis response strategies from the Bolstering and Diminish clusters in its videos. SCCT can be an effective theoretical framework in which to study corporate crises and further research can provide academics and the general public alike with tools to interpret organizational crisis communication.